What Are They Saying?

Ready to read more about what "they" are saying about Apple?  David Passell finds lots of information at arstechnica.  Today’s feature articles discuss such weighty issues as problems with the 27-inch iMac screen, predicted iPad features, a poll on flash for iPad, and other raves and pans. He adds, “The arstechnica site has a lot of other news items besides Apple. To see them and other subjects suggest you click on the ‘All’ tab.”

Then to leave you with a smile, David sends this link which includes a picture of a laptop computer that’s been microwaved, and is for sale for US $26001.00 to benefit charity. Scroll down to see the video.              Puzzled by 21 blank boxes on that site, I control-clicked on one of the little ? in the tiny blue square, then choosing "Open image in new window"  that brought up the missing photo.

More on Flash

Following up on the short presentation by Art Gorski this morning, David Passell discovered more.  He writes, "In the meeting this morning somebody asked if the 'clicktoflash' demonstrated for Safari had an equivalent in Firefox. Here is the information. (Double click to enlarge the screen shot.)

"I downloaded it and it works. I notice that you can't unselect once you click on a hidden flash; you have to exit the site then re-enter. Other than that it works fine. Below is the information from my Google. Note that the Flashtracer mentioned is for older versions of Firefox (I have 3.5.7), and I didn't bother with it. A couple of other useful add-ons I installed earlier allow me to have multi-line bookmarks and tabs like Opera. Another thing: I would suggest only installing Add-ons with URLs that contain ...mozilla.org... You'll notice that there will be a warning that says only install add-ons from people you trust."

Starting Off 2010

We started off 2010 with 35 people at the January meeting today at the Prescott Library.
Thanks to Roger Lakner (in the picture here) and Art Gorski for their presentations.  Lucky ticket holders won Avery products.  We're all eager to try out the CDs of the Avery DesignPro software that everyone received.

Double click to enlarge the photos.   Thanks to MaryBeth for the photos, including the new one in the sidebar.

This Blog Gets Fixed

If you've scratched your head over some previous posts on this PMUG blog, wondering if your computer or your technique needed fixing hopefully the problem is fixed.  I was excited several months ago to find the Jump To feature available on Blogspot.  It enabled me to add, "Click to Read More."  Then the rest of the article would come in view.  Alas, something at Blogspot quit working.  An SOS went out to PMUG board, but John Carter looked into it and advised to not use it anymore.  So, I've deleted that line of code from 90 postings!  Scroll up or down, look through the Labels and the Archives.  You should be able to read the entire entries with no problems.

Watch Out For Scams

Continuing to follow the news of Haiti we are all concerned.  But scammers are already at work.  De Prez Allen Laudenslager advises, "Please put a post on the club blog warning against responding to email requests for Relief to Haiti and recommending that anyone who wishes to help give only through charities they recognized as established charities or check with the Better Business Bureau to be sure the charity is not a scam."
        David Passell writes, "Hi All: According to the news some 400 sites purporting to be for Haiti Relief have sprung up. Many are SCAMS designed to profit the originator or worse to collect personal information. I suggest we ignore this email and advise others to do the same. I wonder if our members might also be getting this?
        "I suggest that to donate, go local; give to Salvation Army, Trinity Presbyterian Church, Methodist Church, Red Cross and many others we may know in Prescott."

Backing Up: Part 2

If you read Part One, posted 12-29, then you're ready for the next installment by De Prez Allen Laudenslager. He begins with, "I back up with both Super Duper and Time Machine.

"Super Duper will create a bootable sector on your external drive that will allow you to boot from the external drive if your internal drive quits for any reason. The process to select which drive to boot from is: turn your Mac off. Boot while holding the option/alt key down. This will bring up a dialog box listing any internal, external or CD drive the computer can access. Select your external drive and your back up and running on the external drive.

"Super Duper is free, but will only backup ALL the files you select, changed from the last back up or not. If you pay the $15 bucks, then you only need to fully back up once, all future backups will only be changed files, much faster that way.

"Since I’m on a laptop, my external drive is not always connected. I do a Super Duper back up at least once a week. I backup with Time Machine whenever I do anything that I would hate to lose, every two to three days at least.

"My goal is to be able to restore my hard drive in case of another crash. So my restore process would be to install the new internal drive and then boot from my external drive and restore from Super Duper, which will reinstall all my software including the OS. Then do a Time Machine restore to get my files (to the latest backup date/time).

"Without a fatal crash or a blank drive to try this on, I can’t be sure it will work the way I expect, but my Mac expert claims that it should. I am sure that all the files I need will be on the drive, it is just the recovery steps that are in question. And since restoring the files will not erase them from my external drive, if I make a mistake, all it will take is time to get the step right."

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Free Download to Clean Up Programs

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"Many of you may have heard me complain that my Macbook locks up if I leave it running with the case open and don't do anything with it for as little as 3 minutes." De Prez Allen Laudenslager continues, " I downloaded OnyX and ran the clean up programs. Seems to have fixed the problem! Since it cleans up more than one thing in each category I can't tell exactly what was wrong or what fixed it.

"Do I really care? NO! I just like that it now works right.  OnyX is free and downloads from the Apple site." Need details?  Allen suggests you contact Roger Lakner.  And he thanks Roger, for the help.

MacBook Battery Problem Solved

De Prez Allen Laudenslager found a solution for his battery problem. He relates, "My MacBook battery has been shutting down my computer in less than 15 minutes and is only 2 and a half years old. Should last longer. I also noticed that while the computer shuts down with a low battery message, when I check the manual battery level indicator on the battery it still shows a full charge

"I ran all the internal checks and tried everything on the Apple help pages. Then I found the directions to disconnect the power cord and let the computer run till it quit. Then leave it turned on for at least 5 hours. Yes, 5 hours after the battery died."

Allen continues, "Left it on over night after it quit and the next morning reconnected the power cord. After recharging, I have run for almost an hour and the battery shows slightly less than half charge which seems about right. The computer did not shut down and that's good enough for me.

"Try this if you are having short battery life in your laptop before you spend all that money for an new battery.

calibrating the battery
fully charge 2 hrs beyond green indicator on power cable
run on battery until machine shuts down or sleeps
leave computer off for 5 hrs or more
connect power adaptor, and leave connected until battery is fully charged.

resetting PRAM
(holding command + alt + P + R at boot time)

resetting SMC
remove external power
remove battery
hold down power button for 5+ seconds

Allen concludes, "From my Mac expert, the one that finally worked for me was the charge, run till shutdown and then recharge."

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Looking for iPhoto Solution

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After some questions we've received on problems with iPhoto John Carter sends this advice, "This could be an indication that the hard drive in the computer is starting to fail, or that you are running out of space on your internal hard drive.

"First, check to see how much space is left on the hard drive. If you have at less than 1GB of free space, I would be concerned. A small amount of available space on the internal hard drive clearly indicates that you need an external hard drive and need to move folders from the internal hard drive to the external hard drive to give the Mac room to work in.

"Check the internal hard drive available space by right-clicking on the 'Macintosh HD' in the 'Devices' section of the Finder, then clicking on 'Get Info.'

The popup should look something like this.

"If you are losing other files on the computer and not just photos in the iPhoto library, a failing hard drive is most reasonable.

"To help in isolating the problem, you could add a second, external hard drive anyway and move your iPhoto library to that hard drive. This is not a straightforward operation, so it is best done by someone who knows what they are doing. By moving the iPhoto library to a new external hard drive, if the problem persists then you will know it has something to do with either the Mac, the iPhoto application, or the way you are accessing or manipulating the photos.

"Having an external hard drive for your iPhoto library could actually speed things up when accessing iPhoto since your iPhoto library is quite large. The technical explanation for this is complicated. I have found that there is an initial time lag when accessing my external hard drives, but only when they have 'gone to sleep,' which is normal. If the external hard drives are active, then everything works fast. I use an external hard drive for all my videos and many of my photos.

"You could also have someone sit with you while you work with iPhoto to see if they can catch what might be causing the problem, but that could take hours to wait for the problem to show up, and this is why I think moving the iPhoto library to an external hard drive would be a better way to approach the problem."

Dealing With Mac Slowdowns

"Unfortunately, mysterious computer slowdowns can be difficult to diagnose," so states an article sent to us by Jim Hamm.  The writer goes on to explain ten suggestions of areas to check, urging readers to first make sure Mac is backed up properly before proceeding.  He goes into specifics and gives useful links.  Slow Mac or not, this would be information to check out for your own future reference.

Now De Prez Allen Laudenslager writes to say, "I've been having a problem with my MacBook locking up if left with the screen open and unused for more than a few minutes since I installed a new hard drive last May. I upgraded to Snow Leopard (Christmas present) but that didn't solve the problem.

"After following the instructions in Jim's post and running OnyX the problem seems to have been fixed!"

My Top Ten Suggestions for a Better Year Ahead

 1. Take care of what matters to you.
 2. Be thankful for what you’ve got.
 3. Watch for improvements you can adopt and adapt.
 4. Spend time on what brings a twinkle to your eyes.
 5. Encourage someone.
 6. Keep an eye out for trends.
 7. Don’t get snowed under with demands.
 8. Prepare for changes.
 9. Organize something: your desk, closet, kitchen, car.
10. Add Honesty to the journalistic ABCs, Accuracy, Brevity, Clarity
(Someone Else has already given the 10 Commandments; mine are Suggestions)
For Don and myself, Elaine, we add #11, Pray for wisdom for those in leadership.
Did I forget anything important, here?

Happy New Year!

Secretary Bobbie Pastor sends PMUG members and friends a cheery greeting and a wish for a Blessed New Year.

 She says, "The Prescott Mac User Group Board wants to take this opportunity to express their appreciation for your membership and acknowledge those of you who were our guests throughout the year.  We hope that our efforts have made a difference in your Mac experience. We are going to continue the SIG classes as long as there is an interest. We want to make our monthly meetings as interesting as possible. Allen is working hard to bring informative speakers to the group. If you have good ideas for speakers, please let him know."

"We wish you a very Happy and Prosperous New Year. We look forward to seeing our friends again in 2010."  Your PMUG Board,
Allen Laudenslager,  Bill Williamson,  Bobbie Pastor,  David Passell,  Jim Hamm,   Elaine Hardt,   John Carter,   Roger Lakner,  Art Gorski